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A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll.

Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government’s become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree.

The survey indicates a partisan divide on the question: only 37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents and nearly 7 in 10 Republicans say the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans.

According to CNN poll numbers released Sunday, Americans overwhelmingly think that the U.S. government is broken – though the public overwhelmingly holds out hope that what’s broken can be fixed.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted February 12-15, with 1,023 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey’s sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the overall survey.

When I flew home from Washington, DC after a business trip last week, the TSA agent asked to test my laptop. I politely asked what they were testing for. It was just routine she told me. And she’s right, it has become routine, a much too routine standard operating procedure designed to make us believe that the usurping of our privacy and human rights is normal and necessary if we are to be secure and free.

The obvious irony is that we are not secure and free if government agents have a right to violate our privacy and deny our rights without cause. I considered protesting but I figured that the best outcome of that would be missing my flight, the worst case being detained incommunicado in an undisclosed location. The likelihood of a plausible explanation for this sudden interest in my laptop was undoubtedly nil. In other words, whatcha gonna do and TSA knows that.

My youngest son barely has a memory of when you could get on a plane without having to take off your shoes first. He was in 4th grade on Sept. 11, 2001 and within days his school was decked out in American flags and “I Support President Bush” signs appeared everywhere. For him this is normal, the way things are supposed to be. And that is no accident.

(T)he world’s first online, on-demand television network dedicated to homeland security and global development. HSTV is a 24/7 interactive television channel dedicated to producing broadcast-quality video programs on all aspects of homeland security and the role of global development in fighting terrorism.

HSTV is also dedicated to facilitating rapid awareness of new technologies and services, and assisting in the transfer of those technology solutions to the government and critical infrastructure marketplace.

MURRIETA, Calif. — A former Border Patrol officer said Thursday that constant demands to meet monthly arrest quotas led agents in the Inland Empire to cruise streets, bus stops and even medical clinics looking for illegal immigrants.

“We had to make eight apprehensions a day and if we didn’t meet that goal we were pressured to get more the next day,” said Tony Plattel, who was fired last month for driving what he said were six dehydrated illegal immigrants back to headquarters despite orders to wait until his van was full. “I interfered with the quota, that’s why I was fired,” he said.

RIVERSIDE, California – January 29, 2009 The Brown Berets of Aztlán led a march from the César Chávez Community Center at the Bobby Bonds Park to the Riverside Sheriff’s Department, where they held a candlelight vigil and demonstration.

They convoked the assembly to build momentum for the movement for justice for Annette García, a Perris resident, Brown Beret member, and mother of six, who was shot in the back on January 23 by a Riverside sheriff’s deputy.

The Brown Berets were joined by mourners, anti-police brutality activists, community members, and immigrant rights activists, many of also protested today’s simultaneous immigration raids in many communities across the Inland Empire.

It is our long-standing policy to use limited federal resources to pursue the sophisticated criminal organizations who smuggle millions of dollars of drugs, guns and other contraband across our borders,” Sullivan wrote in November.

On January 17, 1920, The 18th Amendment went into effect and what is known as Prohibition became reality. What did not become reality were the predictions of the benefits it would have vis-a-vis Organized Crime.